Into almost every line of this story the evangelist places a parallel with biblical prophecies, and some of them are quoted directly in the text. But almost every quotation is interpreted and understood here in a new way: Jesus becomes the center of all the prophecies and psalms. And this newness is naturally dictated by the course of the events that follow: everything will be fulfilled both as expected and, at the same time, in a way completely different from what the disciples and the people accompanying Jesus expect.

He enters the holy city, but what awaits Him there is not triumph, but execution. He is greeted as King, but He will be condemned as an impostor and criminal. He cleanses the Jerusalem Temple, but soon He Himself will become the new Temple for those who follow Him after His Resurrection.

Christ shows a new way, not at all the one people expect, even His disciples. He will fulfill the prophecies in a new way, in a way that even the wisest of the wise will not think to read them. He does not do what we expect of Him; He calls us to follow Him into His new life, into a new Heaven and a new Earth.

The image of Jesus overturning the tables of the money changers, those ancient exchange booths, and the benches of the sellers of doves, the Zion equivalent of a candle kiosk, is so unfamiliar that in the course of life Christians often have to answer puzzled questions: why does He act this way? It sharply contradicts the sugary little face of that religious painting called "the third half of the nineteenth century," but not the real Son of God. Yet indeed the Lord, of whom it is said that He will not break a bruised reed or quench a smoking wick (Isa. 42:3), would seem not to act in such a way.

What Jesus does at this moment is called a prophetic action. As Hosea and Isaiah give symbolic names to their children as witnesses to the fulfillment of prophecies, as Jeremiah buys a field in Anathoth when all Israel is about to be occupied, these are visible images that enter the consciousness of people who do not want to listen, having ears and not hearing. Yet this action of Christ is not a prophecy, but the fulfillment of a prophecy: "Zeal for Your house consumes Me" (Ps. 68:10), says the famous messianic psalm. The evangelist John writes on behalf of the disciples in the second chapter of his Gospel that they understood this action of Jesus precisely in this way: He acts as the Messiah, according to the prophecies, must act.

Frankly speaking, this is indeed a distinguishing sign of the Messiah, because all of us treat social proprieties and stereotypes of pious sweetness with far greater reverence than the holiness of the Almighty. Because He may perhaps forgive us our irreverence, but society will not forgive reproach, just as it did not forgive Jesus.

The people greet Jesus with joyful cries: "Salvation to the Son of David!" Many of us came to faith with the same joy, meeting Christ for the first time, suddenly realizing that He is truly alive, truly answers prayer, and leads us through life.

But after the enthusiastic cries of greeting come decisive changes: the Lord encounters the complete mismatch between the Temple, the center of Jerusalem's spiritual life, and the purpose for which it was built; the spiritual blindness of the religious leaders; and the unfaithfulness of the people, who are ready to shout both "hosanna" and "crucify Him." He encounters all this also at the "micro level," when He comes into the life of an individual person who, though glad at the Savior's coming, has already managed to turn from a temple of the Holy Spirit into a "den of robbers," and who will prove unfaithful and blind to Him many more times. But, as we know, this is not yet the end of the story...